Reading is a bad habit;

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An Accountant's Experience with
Speed Reading
by Raymond L. Gibbs (New Orleans)
America is a literate nation, and we are
naturally proud of the fact. It is also an
inventive nation, and we have learned
to print at speeds staggering to the
imagination. Every day, great quanti­ties
of printed material reach our desks
demanding attention. If we are away
for a week, we run the risk of being
crushed by its sheer physical weight,
and a respectable amount of time is re­quired
simply to handle, initial and
pass on the accumulation, too often un­read.
In addition to the claims on our time
for required reading, areas of profes­sional
and cultural development and
relaxation beckon us. Floods of news­papers,
magazines and books swirl
around us, and the process of making
a satisfactory selection is, at least, a
"puzzlement." The newspapers and
magazines appeal to us, but even those
we select get little more than our cur­sory
review. We all like to know the
names of the current best sellers and
to be able to talk about them, but many
of us don't feel comfortable enough
with books to read them with ease. We
may read one or two a year, more to
relieve our consciences than for per­sonal
enjoyment.
"Triple Your Reading Speed." Many
of these thoughts darted in and out of
my mind at a rate somewhat in propor­tion
to the backlog of unread material.
It wasn't a matter of being current;
that was out of the question. It was
simply a calculated risk on how far be­hind
I could afford to be. Occasionally,
by spending more time I could reduce
the risk, but after all, I knew that I
needed to spend less time reading, not
more. The only way to do this, of
course, was to learn to read rapidly.
According to a series of advertise­ments
in the newspaper this could be
accomplished readily. With a boldness
that almost made me ashamed that I
didn't already know how, the advertise­ments
guaranteed to triple my reading
speed, without the use of machines.
This latter claim was particularly
meaningful to me because I had taken
a rapid reading course in 1955 that
used machines as a pacer. One such
machine lowered a shade over the page
being read. Another type flashed lines
of reading material across a screen. In
each case, the machines were preset at
speeds just in excess of that which was
comfortable reading, so as to increase
the flow of words past my eyes and thus
force me to increase my reading speed.
I was much impressed with the results
of this course at the time, but through
the years since then, not having the
machines at hand, I did not retain my
new reading speed.
The currently advertised course sub­stituted
the hand as a pacer, pointing
out that unlike machines, my hand was
always with me. It was no secret to me
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